This weekend, sadly, marks the anniversary of the bonfire of the vanities. Not the novel from the ‘80s, but the actual bonfire of the vanities, the event in 1497 when thousands of objects that might tempt people to sin were reduced to nothing but ash. Unfortunately, burnings such as this one weren’t that unusual – they have happened many times over the course of history and have cost us countless priceless works of art.
1. The bonfire of the vanities, 1497. These days the phrase refers to any time a mass burning of literature and the arts takes place, but this is the one that really gave birth to the term. A Dominican priest by the name of Girolamo Savonarola declared a long laundry list of items immoral and sinful: cosmetics, mirrors, games, paintings, pagan books, sculptures, fancy clothing, instruments and much, much more. He and his followers rallied the public to rid themselves of all things, and on February 7, 1497, they burned a massive pile of stuff, sending swirls of smoke across Florence for days. It’s been said that we lost many Botticelli paintings to this particular fire, possibly at the hands of Botticelli himself. The tables had turned by 1498, though, and Savonarola was executed in a particularly gruesome but fitting way: he was burned to death on the same spot where his famed bonfire of the vanities had taken place a little more than a year earlier.
2. Roman history, 25 AD. Imagine having a detailed account of Roman history before 25 AD. We have pieces of things now, sure, but Senator Aulus Cremutius Cordus wrote all about the civil war and the reign of Caesar Augustus. In 25 AD, he displeased the wrong people. His persecutors, namely Sejanus, said he was trying to turn Julius Caesar’s assassin, Brutus, into a hero; his supporters say that he criticized Sejanus for commissioning a statue of himself and Sejanus wasn’t too pleased about that. At any rate, Cordus was forced to kill himself and copies of his works were burned. His daughter managed to save some of his writing, but only bits and pieces of it have made it to the present day.
3. The Royal Library of Alexandria. We think this Egyptian institution was founded sometime around the third century B.C. and contained tons of valuable stuff. Imagine all of the information we might have had if its entire contents hadn’t perished in a fire on four separate occasions, including once when Julius Caesar accidentally burned it down in 48 B.C. when he set fire to his own ships. Well, ancient accounts seem to agree that it was an accident – modern accounts aren’t always so forgiving. The other times the library was torched involved anti-Christian or anti-Pagan movements (whatever was in vogue at the time).
4. The works of Abelard, 1121. Theologian Peter Abelard suffered a couple of devastating blows in pretty short order in the 1100s. First, his now-famous love affair and marriage to Heloise was exposed; Heloise was sent to a nunnery and Abelard was castrated. Then, a few years later, Abelard’s interpretations of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit were called heresy. He was locked up in a monastery, but not before he was forced to burn all of his work.
5. The Valley of the Squinting Windows, 1918. Not all book burnings are religious in nature. This burning happened because the town in the novel seemed to closely resemble the real-life Irish village of Delvin. The author’s depiction of the townspeople was not very kind – the whole book was about how the town was gossipy and overly concerned with trying to keep up with other families in terms of possessions and accomplishments. Apparently it hit a little too close to home and the town held a mass burning of the book.
6. Braille books, 1842. Oh, that evil Braille system!! About 20 years after its invention, officials at the school for the blind in Paris started to think that if blind people were able to read on their own, there would be no use for teachers to help them and countless people would be out of jobs. Therefore, in a really sane move, the director of the institute demanded that books written in Braille should be incinerated. As you can see by our widespread use of Braille today, his efforts didn’t really work.
7. Comic books, 1948. Thanks to the “findings” of Dr. Fredric Wertham in an article he titled “Horror in the Nursery,” parents of the ‘40s decided they were tired of their kids being corrupted by the violence in crime comics. They arranged mass burnings, notably in Binghamton, New York, and Spencer, West Virginia. The craze didn’t quite end there, though – in 1949, more researchers had jumped on the bandwagon and declared that “comic books train kids like animals, by breaking their spirit.” Not only that, but characters such as Superman were completely messing with the ideas kids were forming about the laws of physics – after all, people can’t really fly.
8. The Satanic Verses, 1988. The book that still has Salman Rushdie keeping a watchful eye on his surroundings was controversial from the beginning. Some considered it blasphemous, and not only were book burnings held around the world, bookstores that deigned to carry it were actually bombed.
9. Harry Potter. Believing the wildly popular books promote the occult, religious organizations have held book burning parties since the Chosen One was just an orphan under the stairs on Privet Drive. They’re not always burned though – when one group was denied a permit to hold a public bonfire due to “toxic emissions used by the ink,” they held a slashing instead… because the town should be much more comfortable with a mob of people wielding knives, right?
10. The Great Fire of London, 1666. Here’s an accidental book burning for you. In 1666, a bunch of the town’s most beloved literature was stored in an underground crypt in Old St. Paul’s Cathedral. Because it was stone-lined, it was believed that the books would be OK if fire befell the place. And it might have, if falling stones hadn’t busted through the top of the crypt. Once that happened, the fire made its way through and the vast collection of books and scrolls only served to make the place burn faster.
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Don’t forget this famous book burning in Nazi Germany:
http://drvitelli.typepad.com/providentia/2007/08/burning-the-l-1.html
posted by Romeo Vitelli on 2-4-2010 at 6:00 pm
And the burning of Beatles records after John Lennon said they were more popular than Jesus. All those limited edition LPs, wigs and lunchboxes…gone.
posted by Tracie on 2-4-2010 at 7:27 pm
And my personal favorite, Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Discos Dead baby!
posted by TheZed on 2-4-2010 at 7:57 pm
Yes, but Tracie and TheZed, those are albums, not books. Different article completely. :)
posted by Shandi on 2-4-2010 at 9:12 pm
was gonna say, the major book burning that took place in berlin.
posted by karina on 2-4-2010 at 10:17 pm
When reading the words “book burning” everyone first thinks of “the one in Berlin”. So you don’t actually have to mention it here since everyone knows it anyway. Leaves more space for the rather obscure ones …
posted by Frank on 2-4-2010 at 11:01 pm
Thank you for including the comic book burnings of the ’40s and ’50s. It is constantly disregarded as unworthy of mention in terms of “book burning,” due to the notion that comic books had (or still have) no intrinsic literary or artistic value. Not coincidentally, of course, is that it was precisely this line of reasoning that allowed for a hasty, unreasoned, and largely unquestioned deployment to burn not just horror and romance comics, but nearly all comic books that were the top sellers on the newsstands at the time. The threat of juvenile delinquency was the constant rallying cry decades long before Wertham and Sen. Kefauver conspired with the same reasoning and effectively put countless purveyors, including top dog EC, out of business. Artists were forced to keep their jobs secret, as it was similar to admitting that he or she was a prostitute or a communist. What’s sometimes lost is that the ugly culmination of all the comic book fear during that time is still with us today as most comics still carry the Comics Code Authority seal.
posted by Luke on 2-5-2010 at 3:43 am
the alexandria library was finally destroyed by mulsim
the quote “there is only one book, the koran” is the reason given.
fortunately, things have changed alot in the ensuing 700 or so years
posted by ee the c on 2-5-2010 at 8:35 am
I don’t know if there’s just a large gap in my history, but I have no idea about the book burning in Berlin.
posted by Ki on 2-5-2010 at 10:38 am
some people have never heard of it. i’d never heard of the berlin book burning until i went there and took a tour. it would still have been interesting to read about.
posted by karina on 2-5-2010 at 11:04 am
The thought of books being burned makes me cringe. Human paranoia and fear has destroyed so much. I don’t believe any book should be burned, ever, for any reason. Even if the content is offensive or anti-whatever one should keep it for posterity and to remember our own weakness and to learn from it.
I agree that comics burning should still be considered, comics are a great source of art and literature. Comics are too easily dismissed as childish, but they can tell great stories with incredible artwork. A picture is worth a thousand words….
reCaptcha: They Conga
posted by hockey zombie on 2-5-2010 at 11:28 am
You would think that in this day and age that we would be past book burnings….i mean really, burningh Harry Potter books….there are soooo many other things out there that are far worse, but this is chosen….i give up on trying to understand…
re-captcha: wraps industry
posted by Jennfier on 2-5-2010 at 11:29 am
I know nothing of the book burning in Berlin.
posted by Sara in AL on 2-5-2010 at 11:32 am
Spanish conquistadores burnt every Mayan book they could find. Only four remain, one of which is the Dresden Codex. It was a common act for ascending Aztec rulers to destroy the history of preceding regimes. That way they stood alone in their glory. It seems that ideas about book burning are a tad Eurocentric here.
posted by Alice V on 2-5-2010 at 11:47 am
I think I am going to cry after reading this…
posted by VScott on 2-5-2010 at 12:10 pm
Scott,
Are you going to cry because so many commentators on a “smart” site don’t know about the Berlin burning? Because if that’s the reason, please move over and share your tissues. We are in for a world of hurt when everyone knows how many plastic surgeries Heidi Montag has, but they miss some of the key events in modern history. What is it they say about forgetting history and being forced to repeat it………..
posted by Monkey on 2-5-2010 at 1:46 pm
I watched a lot of The History Channel, back when Mike Myers referred to is as “The WWII Channel” and I’ve seen Hitler’s Henchmen and The Color of War and the 5 Star Generals etc, but I don’t really recall hearing much about Berlin Book Burning.
It seems like something they’d do, but as much as I’ve ever seen of it was in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade.
posted by Big Jonny on 2-5-2010 at 2:15 pm
@Monkey – Please don’t criticize “smart” people so harshly for gaps in their knowledge. After all, many of us read m_f to expand our horizons; if I already knew everything, I’d have no reason to read or to listen to others. I would venture to guess that some of those who aren’t familiar with Berlin might, for instance, be brilliant at physics or have a wealth of knowledge about Asian art history.
BTW, I wouldn’t know who Heidi Montag is if I fell over her.
posted by B on 2-5-2010 at 2:58 pm
Monkey
Not all of us get the same education. In 12 years of elementary and high school education, I never heard mention of the Berlin Book Burnings. I still managed to AP out of a college history requirement. I did learn about them from things my parents said or from pop culture references (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade comes to mind). So don’t define “smart” person as anything other than an inquisitive person. That’s how we make sure book burnings don’t happen again… by exposing ourselves to new ideas and information. Anyone that read this article and saw something they didn’t know about is either hitting Google or Wikipedia right now to find out more.
posted by Di on 2-5-2010 at 3:23 pm
Always curious when I read something like this – Which calender are you on? Is the Feb 7 reference contemporary or Gregorian?
posted by aliceb on 2-5-2010 at 3:23 pm
The Confucius book burnings in the Qin Dynasty about 213 bc…
This is what is wrong with the world. When literature and philosophies and knowledge of humanity is burned for a dictator’s selfish gain, that is a crime on humanity. The real hate crime.
posted by Tousher on 2-5-2010 at 3:49 pm